9© SEA FISH OF TRINIDAD 



and you never know what you may come across or draw 

 thereout. Do not be disheartened, if after many attempts, 

 you have toiled hard and taken nothing. After all, your 

 man, or men, have done most of the toiling in bending their 

 backs to the oar; very likely when you are giving up in 

 despair and returning home, you will (as has happened to me 

 on several occasions), hook and land one or two large fish, 

 making up for all your chagrin. 



I have alluded to porpoises and the mysterious manner 

 they disappear before the "remous." Now the sea in the 

 vicinity of the Bocas is nearly always being occupied, both as 

 a playing and hunting ground by these ocean shikarees. 

 There are two varieties that are exceedingly common, the 

 "marsouen blanc" (local name) or white porpoise, a small 

 greyish-brown porpoise weighing but a few hundred weight, 

 and the other "marsouen canale" or canal porpoise, a dark- 

 brown variety, averaging somewhere about a ton in weight. 

 They are great destroyers and eaters of fish, and play havoc 

 with schools of mackerel, cavalli, and other pelagic fish, and 

 this object they achieve in a truly military fashion, going in 

 Indian file and throwing out wings to surround their prey. 

 I have seen a veritable army of the big porpoise marching in 

 this fashion through the sea with extended wings, or perhaps 

 it would be more correct to express it in Zulu fashion, horns, 

 at regular intervals, jimiping and rearing their massive 

 bodies right out of the sea, silver glittering chunks of fish 

 dropping from their jaws, and note well, the supposed tyrant 

 of the seas, the shark, is afraid of the porpoise ; he may, and 

 doubtless does act as a scavenger or camp follower, but 

 attack M. le Marsouen? Never. These herds of porpoise 

 do, undoubtedly, drive shoals of pelagic fish near the coasts 

 for the fisher's benefit, but whether the destruction that 

 they cause counterbalances this or not, is an open question. 



